


Companions and Eventualities 4 -- Negotiations

by Viola_Laterra



Series: Companions and Eventualities [4]
Category: Enderal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers for Brave New World ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25007539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola_Laterra/pseuds/Viola_Laterra
Summary: Jespar's proposed relationship rules may require some adjustments in practice.  But it's ultimately worth it to both him and the Prophet.(Takes place a month after the end of the game.)
Relationships: Jespar Dal'Varek/Prophet | Prophetess
Series: Companions and Eventualities [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809244
Kudos: 9





	Companions and Eventualities 4 -- Negotiations

I awoke in the middle of the night to the feel of the ship rocking in a bit of a storm. Why had I done this? Gotten on a ship, *again*, when pretty much every time I had done so before had gone badly? Well, it was Jespar's fault, I supposed. And at least he was here to comfort me... 

As I rolled over in our bed, I found that he wasn't in fact there. A brief moment of panic gripped me, unexpectedly alone. But then I forced myself to think through the steps I used to calm myself these days: We'd averted the Cleansing. We'd found a Numinos, and there was no whispering of High Ones anymore around the edges of my mind. It had been a near thing -- Yuslan had been hit by falling rubble, and only Jespar, Arantheal, and I had made it to the site of the old Cleansing. But we'd done it.

And then in the confusion that followed, Jespar and I had escaped Enderal to join the expedition to the distant continent on the far side of the world. We shared many nights of desperate lovemaking, and sometimes talking, and sometimes just laying awake together, holding each other, trying to shed the horrors of the Cycle.

But we'd been at sea for a month now. And at this point, I'd noticed Jespar noticing some of our crewmates. And true to our agreement, I set myself to watch as he grew enamored of one of them. So. Apparently tonight was the night he'd finally made a move on her? I got up out of bed and tried to sort my feelings about the situation.

I wrapped myself in Jespar's cloak, just to fill my senses with the smell of him, to ground me, to remind myself of who he was and why I loved him. I partly curled up in the chair across from our bed -- barely a foot away. We hadn't been able to afford a large berth on the ship, but it was good enough. At least he hadn't brought her back here, I thought, and kicked me out of our bed.

I thought about what he'd always said to me -- that he wanted the freedom to pursue others, but it was me he wanted to come back to. That had felt romantic in its own way, but now that it was happening? 

Actually... it wasn't so bad. I did have faith that he would come back to me... and I decided I would see how it felt when he did. In the meantime, I toyed with the idea of what I would do for myself in the meantime.

I hadn't been attracted to anyone on the ship, really, I thought... but there was one member of the crew that I very much enjoyed talking to, and if I played it back in my mind, it seemed like maybe he had been showing interest in me. Was I interested in trying that out? Not at the moment, I decided. And after a while, I dozed off.

"Ah." I heard Jespar's voice. "Waited up for me, I see?" he said, closing the door to our cabin gently.

I shook my head. "No, I... I woke up and you weren't there." Something in my voice must have given away that it had actually bothered me, because he looked at once worried and irritated. He sat on our bed, across from me, silent for the moment. Was he really going to make me ask?

"I assume you were with Dalla," I began. Jespar threw me a sharp look. "Yes. What of it?"

I sighed, not quite sure how to respond to that. He said, "You know what we..." I caught his gaze, and whatever was in my eyes stopped him. I said, "I know what we discussed. And... it's fine. You came back to me, didn't you?"

Now his look was uncertain. He said, "Yes." And then, after a moment, he put a hand on my leg. "Yes, I want very much to come back to you."

I considered how this all felt. And then I realized what was missing: "I think... I *am* fine with this, but I think I would like more warning."

His hand tensed on my leg, and I had a pretty good guess at what he was thinking. "Jespar, I'm not saying you have to ask for my permission... I just want to know how to set my expectations. So I don't... wake up and find you not there. We're doing this your way, so can I have some say in how it plays out?"

Jespar's hand relaxed, and he sighed, his whole body sagging, letting out what must have been a lot of tension. He hadn't known how I'd react, when this actually happened, I realized. It had sounded great when I'd agreed, back in Enderal. But he'd been secretly afraid, all this time, that it wouldn't work, even though I intended to do things his way.

I put my hand on his. He looked up at me, and then said, "What if there isn't an opportunity to let you know?"

I sighed. "Well, do your best. Maybe let me know after the fact?" Some of my unsettled feelings from earlier must have played into how I said it, because he reached for me and drew me over to the bed with him, pulling the cloak away and tossing it back on the chair, wrapping his arms around me. The real thing was better than the cloak, I thought.

"All right. I'll do my best," Jespar said to me. I nestled into him a little, and then said, "So... did you have fun with her?"

He chuckled, the usual good humor shining through the muddled feelings of a few minutes ago like a ray of sunlight through stormclouds. "Want me to kiss and tell, huh?" he teased. I laughed. "Not if you don't want to. Just wanted to know if you enjoyed yourself."

Jespar sighed with satisfaction and said, "Yes, yes, I did. But she's nowhere near as good as you," and with that he leaned over to kiss my neck in that one spot that never failed to get me going. I laughed softly and said, "You're not sated yet? You've been gone for hours already..."

He chuckled into my neck, continuing to nibble and probe with his tongue. I sighed with pleasure as he said, "Well, when I have you to come back to, I'm just reminded all over again why that was my choice in the first place."

We settled back into the bed together, and the lovemaking was all the sweeter for the effort it had taken to communicate honestly about it all.

Until I woke again, with a start. This time Jespar was laying next to me, dressed differently. And I remembered. The Cleansing had happened. We had escaped to the Star City. We'd been living here for about a month. It had taken a while to even begin to learn how to operate the city's machinery, and for a while we'd had to take shifts while sleeping because some of the defenses were still active. But just recently, we'd managed to make a small part of one of the towers consistently safe to stay in. 

Jespar was awake only a moment after I was, with a little gasp. "What? What is it?" he asked, slightly alarmed. "Nothing," I said. We didn't sleep so well, up here. Though that was getting better, as we were starting to learn how to use the Starlings' technology. 

He sat up and looked me in the eyes. "Not nothing, I can see," he said. His voice was calmer now; he'd accurately assessed that there was no danger. But he had also accurately assessed my disorientation and distress. He reached over and stroked my cheek with his hand. "Another dream?"

I nodded and Jespar sighed. I'd told him about them before. We'd decided I must be seeing other eventualities, though we didn't know why: because I was, or am, a Prophet, or because I had actually physically traveled with Yuslan to another eventuality. Or some machination of the Veiled Woman, perhaps -- she was clearly a master of eventualities.

I found myself shivering; it was hard to stay warm up here in the sky, I thought. Either the Starlings didn't feel cold like other humans did, or we hadn't figured out how to turn on the heat. "Come here," Jespar said, and pulled me close against him, wrapping our blankets around us. "Want to tell me about this one?" he asked affably. That was misleading, I thought, that good-natured, off-handed way he said it. He knew as well as I did how many of the nearby eventualities contained terrible cataclysms. When I woke with those dreams, he usually just held me; sometimes I cried, sometimes not, sometimes I told him about them, sometimes not. But this one... This one made me sad because it was what could have been, maybe a happy future, without the destruction of everything. And it was about us, and how we could have been.

So I nodded a little bit, leaning into him, and told him what I'd seen. He chuckled and said, "Well, it's a nice idea, isn't it? I like to think we would have made it work."

I agreed. He sighed and said, "But I suppose that's pretty moot when we are the only two people left in the whole world. I don't have many other options, do I? Good thing you were always my first choice." I laughed a little and said, "Unless you fancy Starling machines... who am I to judge?" Jespar laughed out loud for a moment, but then sobered. "It's still such an unreal thought, that we're all that's left, up here."

I didn't respond, still thinking and feeling that other eventuality and feeling the loss of what could have been. "Hey," he said, tipping my head up. "Come on, it does neither of us any good to dwell on it too much, does it?" He kissed me softly, and it did make me feel better. The loss of all life on the planet -- was it worth these moments with him? Had I acted selfishly in that moment when I had to decide whether to sacrifice myself for one type of wild hope, or to save us both for an entirely different kind of wild hope? Well, he'd tell me there's no point worrying about it now -- what's done is done.

So I responded to him, showing him how much he meant to me, how glad I was that at least we had each other. When we were both sated, he murmured to me, "I love you, you know that?" I heard a strange echo in my mind; a vision of how he would have last said this to me, if we'd parted in that shaft below the Sun Temple, in that moment, him to warn the other nations of Vyn, me to my own destruction. Not a dream, perhaps, but definitely an echo of a different eventuality.

I nodded, and said softly, "If I could bring only one thing with me to the end of the world... I'm glad it was you." I could see he wanted to say something dismissive, that this was a little too much like the kind of insipid romantic statement he'd once hated, but given that this was something that actually had happened, and not some romantic ideal... I saw him take a deep breath, and then he kissed me again, and then said simply, "I'm glad too." And this time when I drifted off to sleep, I slept more soundly.

**Author's Note:**

> I had planned to write this scene before we got to the end of the game. Fortunately, Enderal sets you up with the story device of eventualities... I made heavy use of this idea in several of the pieces in this series.


End file.
